Long Live Southbank Join Forces to Celebrate Skateboarding As an Anti-Consumerist Form of Culture with Lessons to Teach Wider Society
GROWTH UNDER FOREWORD BY PHINEAS HARPER @PhinHarper Skateboarding was illegal in Norway during much of the 70s and 80s. Even owning a skateboard was forbidden. Underground skaters built ramps in forests and seclud- ed areas to avoid arrest by the Norwegian police. Using public space free from the conventional framework of compliant consumption, skaters have always endured a contested relationship with the city, often driven from public spaces either by law or through the exclusionary design of rails, benches and kerbs. In 2013, one of the most successful skating spots in the UK, the Southbank Undercroft in London also came un- der threat as part of plans to build commercial restau- rants and retail developments in their place. A grass- roots campaign bringing together skaters, public space activists and architects among many others, success- fully defeated the proposals and saved the undercroft. At the Oslo Triennale, Chris Allen of FCBStudios, who recently completed a restoration of the undercroft, and Stuart Maclure of Long Live Southbank join forces to celebrate skateboarding as an anti-consumerist form of culture with lessons to teach wider society. The survival of the Southbank’s Undercroft skate spot is a success story for urban design not slave to the growth impera- tive. Long Live Southbank! SUPPORTERS AND CONTRIBUTORS Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios Long Live Southbank Louis Woodhead Oli Mould DESIGN Studio Mothership UNDERGROWTH “As citizens we are often led to believe that urban spaces are pre-fixed by experts and that there is no alternative, but space is con- stantly produced and invented by the peo- ple who use it every day.” CECILIE SACHS OLSEN, CHIEF CURATOR, OAT UNDERGROWTH CHRIS ALLEN, FCBSTUDIOS STUART MACLURE, LLSB Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Long Live South- bank’s contribution to the 2019 Oslo Architecture Tri- ennale celebrates the Southbank Undercroft, a public space on the South Bank of the River Thames (Lon- don) which has become synonymous with British skate- boarding and creative counterculture.
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